Intellectual Freedom Cannot Exist Without Privacy

I work in the interlibrary loan department of an academic library. Although our privacy policy is quite strict (in the liberal sense), until recently, this policy has not filtered over into the ILL department. After doing a little research, I found that this seems to be the case in most academic libraries. Many progressive academic libraries have overlooked privacy concerns when it comes to ILL. As a result, very little research has been done with privacy concerns in ILL.

In the Library Bill of Rights, the ALA affirms that rights of privacy are necessary for intellectual freedom and are fundamental to the ethics and practice of librarianship. Yet many ILL databases have no privacy barriers in place. In the worst case, access is open to any and all employees with no barriers to prevent nosy people (or government subpoena) from looking at infinite personal requests.

I am lucky to work in a progressive library where this issue is in the process of being solved. We are currently working towards decoupling old ILL requests with our patron’s records. As you can imagine, this process has been long and difficult, but we are thrilled to be in the final phase. When the decoupling is complete, our database will hold records for 90 days after which point the patron’s information will automatically be purged from the request. Obviously this is not a perfect solution. In a perfect system, a request would be completely separate from the patron, but for now, this is the best that we can do.

One of the most difficult parts of this process has been explaining to our patrons why they will no longer have access to their old requests. Some patrons, many of whom have hundreds of requests and use the database as a personal reference point to their research, have been quite upset at this inconvenience. It was even suggested by one upset patron that they would like to waive their right to privacy. Although painful to hear, I have tried to use this opportunity to educate patrons on the importance of privacy as an integral component to intellectual freedom. Without privacy, there can be no intellectual freedom.